The Body and the Archive
In The Body and the Archive, American writer and photographer Allan Sekula argues that, “photography came to establish and delimit the terrain of the other, to define both the generalised look-the typology-and the contingent instance of deviance and social pathology.”[1] During the mid 1800s photography became increasingly more popular, with new methods and photographical practices adhering to all aspects of society. Within the reading, Sekula mentions the concept of ‘the other.’ He discusses the double system of portrait photography and how it’s a tool capable of capturing something that is both honorific and repressive.[2] On the one hand, portrait photography had been popularised by the wealthy and privileged as a way of capturing the personality of an individual with historical accuracy. However, on the other hand, photographers during this time also used portrait photography as a way of capturing a sense of ‘the other.’ Sekula used this term as a way of categorizing people with medical and anatomical deficiencies. This categorization among people created a separation within society and implied that one was somehow better than the other. This concept was developed during the early stages of photography and it was used to diagnose illness and mental instability. Another artist that created work similar to this was Brazillian photographer Sebastião Salgado. Salgado photographed third world Latin America as part of a project where he aimed to “represent a world of differences within the singularity of humanity.”[3] His work was inspired by the concept that we can find ‘the other’ in all qualities of life, and his work focused on finding ‘the other’ within Latin America.
Sekula’s reading talks about the developments within photography as a means of providing scientists with photographic evidence for their research. However, Michel Focault argued that “it [was] a mistake to describe the new regulatory sciences directed at the body in the early nineteenth century as exercises in a wholly negative and repressive power.”[4] He believed that it was the construct of social power that operated this idea. Criminal identification photographs were used as a means of documentation. This scientific approach to photography is interesting as it’s the first time we’ve really seen portrait photography used for something other than a means of art. Criminal identification photographs were designed with the purpose to, quite literally, facilitate the arrest of the referent and to rationalise the realism of defining a criminal.[5]
Human physiognomy became popularised as people were interested in the other and there was a deep fascination with things that were considered different and not ‘normal.’ The word physiognomy was derived from Greece, with physis meaning nature and gnomon meaning judge - essentially it means ‘judging nature.’ An interesting point from Sekula’s reading that I wanted to include, is how portrait photographer Marcus Aurelius Root described photography as a means of “cultural enlightenment.”[6] It was almost as if it was a photographer’s duty to educate people, especially the working class, on this idea of ‘the other.’
There are many traits to photography that resulted in Victorian scientists turning to this medium as a form of research for their work. Not only was photography relatively new technology, advances to the inner workings of a camera became much more modernised and it was a readily available technological source. Photography was seen as the perfect medium for documentation as it produced exact replicas of the subject matter. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a mid-nineteenth century American philosopher, said that photography is “distinguished by its immediacy, it’s authenticity, and the remarkable fact that its eye sees more than the human eye. The camera shows everything.”[7] The phrase ‘seeing is believing’ is one that I think relates to this concept and is a reason as to why scientific photography became popular during the Victorian era. There’s a sense of truthfulness to photography and we are more inclined to trust the accuracy of science if there is photographic evidence to back up a theory. However, while this is all true, it’s still important to remember that photography can be manipulated by the photographer. When taking an image the photographer has the ability to manipulate the image, and therefore stretch our reality of what’s the truth.Alphonse Bertillon was a French police officer who’s considered to be one of the founding fathers of forensic science, by contributing to the developments of forensic photography. He took photographs of criminals and was responsible for developing the first, what is known as today, ‘mugshot.’ His work focused on capturing the physical attributes of criminals, in order to develop a scientific identification system for the police force. With his work, Bertillon designed his own filing system on a series of measurements that he assorted into different categories: small, average and large. This, in turn, enabled him to create subdivisions within each category and allowed him to create an organised system to differentiate criminals.[8] Anthropometric photos focus specifically on the exact measurements of the bone structure and muscles that compose the body. The core elements include height, weight, body mass index and body circumference. As well as Bertillon, Sir Francis Galton also played a significant role in the development of forensic science through criminal photography. Galton dedicated many years to study photography, and in the process invented a new technique of portrait photography known as composite portraits. A composite portrait is a technique that consists of two or more portraits blended together to create one image. It took Galton many years to perfect this skill through much trial and error.
Similar to Bertillon, Galton was interested in the study of criminals and he wanted to see whether or not there was a recognisable ‘criminal type.’ After much deliberation Galton’s experimentation concluded that there is, in fact, no such thing as a criminal type. From his research it was difficult to separate the criminal type from the normal person -there was overlap between both groups of people. He also tried the exact same experiment, but this time he was testing to see whether or not you could tell a chronically sick person from a healthy person. Similar to before, the results of his analysis were ambiguous. Together, Bertillon and Galton aided the advancement of forensic scientific photography. However, their approaches were vastly different. In my opinion, Bertillon's approach was far more accurate in representing a truthful depiction of a criminal. His images were more reliable as they weren’t distorted in any way. Galton’s work, on the other hand, aimed to answer the question of whether or not there is a link between the psychological and physical aspects of a criminal. His work is less reliable than Bertillon’s work as the resulting portrait image isn’t a true person, but instead a morph of multiple different people. Although his work is less reliable from a scientific perspective, it’s still an interesting concept and there is in fact evidence of a correlation between criminals and their physical features. Cesare Lombroso was an Italian psychologist who studied criminology. Lombroso believed that criminality was inherited and that a criminal could be identified by physical defects such as a large protruding forehead, a small upper lip, large face, etc.[9]
Within Sekula’s essay he makes a point that the ‘projects of Bertillon and Galton constitute two methodological poles of the positivist attempts to define and regulate social deviance.’ Together their photography enabled great strives for criminal research and paved the way for developments in modern forensic imaging. Sekula talks about the importance of both forms of photography working together in accordance. He discusses the importance of the realist approach and notes that “while it can be seen as overtly theoretical and scientific in its aims, it’s more covertly practical.” The nominalist approach, on the other hand, “can be seen as overtly practical and technical in its aims, if only covertly theoretical.” Thus, the two both aid research in creating the distinction between criminology and criminalistics: “criminology hunted ‘the’ criminal body [and] criminalistics hunted ‘this’ or ‘that’ criminal body.”
While advancements by both men to forensic photography aided criminal research, there are also a few problems that are unavoidably present when the photograph is used to surveil and control people. Surveillance can deter criminal activity, but it can’t completely eliminate it from happening. It’s only able to record criminal activity that law enforcements then later use to catch the criminal. There is also the issue of privacy. Many argue that surveillance is an invasion of privacy if placed in inappropriate locations and therefore can change a person’s behaviour.
Sekula’s concept of ‘the other’ plays into effect with criminal behaviour -the criminal being the other and the non-criminals being the normal. The two approaches of scientific photography created the foundation for forensics and provided the initial ground research to correspond to the statistical method of research used to identify criminals. While none of their techniques were perfect, it’s undeniable that the work of Bertillon and Galton was crucial for scientific advancements within forensics. Their work was revolutionary for the time and their methods are still used today.